A Cross-National Study Examining Imaginary Companions and Face Pareidolia in British and Chinese Adults

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Davis,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

I agree with the reviewers that it is crucial to reflect on the selection of the face pareidolia task in particular, and how this measure is best interpreted, especially in relation to discussion around visual hallucinations. Addressing the points raised about this are likely to result in significant changes to the manuscript. Please ensure to carefully address all comments raised by reviewers.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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Reviewer #1: I found this to be an interesting study exploring the influence of culture and age on the formation of imaginary companions (ICs) and their relationship with face pareidolia perception. The statistical analyses appear to be appropriately conducted, and the authors clearly acknowledge the study’s limitations in the discussion, such as the small sample size in the group with current IC experiences. However, there are a few additional points that could be addressed or elaborated further:

Abstract:

The conclusion of the abstract comes across as too broad and somewhat disconnected from the actual study scope. For example, the sentence: “Taken together, the results provide more information around the role of top-down processing in both imaginary companion creation and hallucination. This could be a way to learn about the developmental trajectory of hallucination from non-pathological to pathological.” seems overly speculative. Since the study is mainly of exploratory nature and focuses on ICs and face pareidolia, it does not directly investigate hallucinations, especially not pathological ones. For instance, Romagnano et al. (2022) examined face pareidolia in individuals with schizophrenia and found no significant differences in pareidolia perception between patients with or without hallucinations.

Participants:

It would be helpful to clarify whether participants were screened in the questionnaire for psychiatric, developmental, or neurological conditions, given the significant impact such conditions can have on social cognition and related perceptual processes.

Visualization:

The paper would benefit from improved visualization. Including examples of the stimuli used and/or graphical representations of key results would help readers better understand and interpret the findings.

Discussion:

The authors mention that they were surprised to find cultural differences between the UK and China in face pareidolia, referencing a study that found no significant differences between two European subcultures (reference 33). However, given the well-documented differences in face processing between Western and East Asian populations, differences in pareidolia perception might indeed be expected. This could be discussed in more depth, potentially referencing additional literature.

Additionally, Zhou and Meng (2021) analyzed face pareidolia using signal detection theory (SDT). Incorporating similar analyses, such as sensitivity (d') and decision criterion (c), could provide more insight into the nature of the cultural differences observed and should be considered either in this paper or in future work.

Reviewer #2: Note: No generative AI tools were used in the reading and reviewing of this manuscript. Thus, the contents of this review are my own subjective take on this manuscript and were authored by me, the reviewer. Therefore, if there are typos/errors in this review, I apologize. I am only human, after all.

Strengths: This study adds to the growing body of evidence that imaginary companions (ICs) exist across cultures and is a phenomenon that extends beyond the early childhood years. This study further replicates existing research indicating that propensity to create general types of ICs can vary across cultures (i.e., invisible companions or personified objects). Finally, this study also adds to the literature on phenomenon related to the creation of ICs, namely the ability to see/detect faces in visual imagery. It therefore makes a valuable contribution to the extant literature.

Opportunities: There are a number of opportunities to improve this manuscript. I address the most important suggestions first, followed by other comments that I hope are helpful.

Overall Challenges

I am struggling to understand the use of face pareidolia as a proxy for hallucinations, particularly given the task that was used to measure face pareidolia in this study. Hallucinations, to the best of my understanding, are hearing, seeing or experiencing things for which there is no basis of reality, or for which there is no objective evidence of existence. With hallucinations, what is “real” or “true” appears to be a key consideration in measuring what is and is not a hallucination (at least in western cultures). However, seeing faces in visual stimuli such as abstract images, clouds, objects, etc. is a subjective experience in which a basis of reality may not matter as much, and to the best of my knowledge, more closely associated with individual differences in anthropomorphism in the literature. With abstract imagery, the presence of a face in visual stimuli could simply be “in the eyes of the beholder.” In other words, seeing a face in abstract visual imagery is neither “true” nor “false”; it just is.

And that brings me to my concern about the task designed to measure face pareidolia, where “correct hits” are described as suggestive of a greater propensity for hallucinations, and “false positives” are discussed simply as errors. If the task was designed as a measure or proxy for the experience of hallucinations, then the “false positives” are of greater interest than the “correct hits.” And in this study, there were no differences in false positives based on IC status (past or current, absent or present), which would change the authors’ interpretation of the findings. However, if the task is not intended to serve a proxy for hallucinations but rather a direct measure of face pareidolia alone, then it is unclear why the measure needed to have “correct” or “incorrect” responses. In other words, even with the same task, why not simply measure for each participant the number of images in which a face was detected?

Suggestions: In the literature review, make a stronger case as to how seeing faces in visual stimuli has links to hallucinations and to ICs, from a theoretical perceptive and in terms of measurement. Reconsider the description of the measure of face pareidolia (i.e., if it is indeed being used as a proxy for measuring hallucinations or if is not meant to imply anything beyond face pareidolia). If it is being used as a proxy for measuring hallucinations, please explain why “false positives” were not the primary variable of interest.

Literature Review

Again, in the literature review, I am struggling to understand how top-down processing, ICs, hallucinations, and face pareidolia are all theoretically connected. Consider adding a schematic image to clarify for the reader.

The literature review also assumes prior knowledge of other ideas/constructs, such as theory of mind and top-down processing. Provide brief definitions so that readers who are not as familiar with this literature can understand the points that are being made.

In lines 98 – 102, it would be helpful to understand the interplay between cross-cultural differences in face pareidolia and ICs. Perhaps speculate as to what this interaction might be or look like in this section. In addition, more information about how face pareidolia tasks have been used to assess cultural and gender biases would be helpful.

Also, in the literature review, justify why children were not included in this study or the focus of the study, as retrospective reports of ICs are problematic due to memory/recall, and research question 1 (as it is written) suggest that adult and child reports of ICs will be compared.

Finally, throughout the manuscript, please take care in discussing findings using developmental language, as this was a study of adults and did not make direct comparisons with children, or follow participant development over a period of time (see lines 322 – 323 as an example).

Method and Materials

In lines 146-148, please clarify if participants completed both the face pareidolia task and the animacy task in randomized order, or whether they were randomly assigned to complete only one of these tasks. If the latter in the case, then clarify the number of participants in the whole sample and those that completed the face pareidolia task that were used in the analyses.

In lines 150 – 152, clarify if any ethics committees in China were involved in approving this study.

In line 178, please report timing in seconds rather than milliseconds for better reader comprehension.

In lines 191 – 192, thank you for providing a link to the task. However, one figure showing a “correct hit” and a “false positive” would be helpful.

Results

In lines 242 – 244, provide a brief description or example of what is meant by “sensory experiences” of an IC. Also, note that as a reviewer, I did not have access to the supplementary materials (to the best of my knowledge) and would be interested in seeing them.

Discussion

In lines 286 – 288, I am concerned that this sentence reads as a biased and western take on what creativity is and how it manifests across cultures. No doubt that China has produced some of the most celebrated and venerated narratives, music, visual art, dance, film, food and fashion in recorded human history.

In lines 289 – 292, please discuss with more clarity how recruitment methods may have inflated the number of past and current ICs reported, and how this limits study findings without replication. Please also be sure to mention the use of retrospective reporting of ICs as a limitation.

More minor points:

1. There are a few minor typos throughout the manuscript.

2. In Table 1, please report the ns in raw numbers as well as in percentages.

Reviewer #3: In the paper titled “A Cross-National Study Examining Imaginary Companions and Face Pareidolia in British and Chinese Adults”, the researchers are investigating the differences in creation of Imaginary companions in childhood and adulthood in Chinese and British adults, the differences in face pareidolia, and the link between creating an IC and pareidolia.

They collect data from 291 adults (185 Chinese) through online questionnaires. They did not find differences in the prevalence of adulthood ICs between Chinese and British adults, although British were more likely to report a childhood IC. In the face pareidolia task Chinese participants reported more false alarms than the British. Finally, those with a current IC were more likely report correct face pareidolia. These results are interpreted as support for the “role of top-down processing in both imaginary companion creation and hallucination.”

I find the research question interesting and the tasks employed as appropriate. However, I have questions about the conceptualization of the research question and the interpretation of the results.

The researchers discuss the research question in relation to hallucinations, however, I believe that the link between hallucinations and ICs (and pareidolia) needs to be explained/rationalized better in the introduction. The rationale behind the link between top-down processing and ICs are clear but I do find the link to hallucinations a little unclear.

It’s reported that “individual differences in the ability to detect face pareidolia have been found to correlate with the frequency of visual hallucination-like experiences in non clinical participants”. Here, I am confused as to what ‘visual hallucination-like experiences’ would be like. Can they also be considered signs of a person’s high creativity/imagination? How is the distinction made between creativity/imagination and ‘hallucination-like experiences’?

There were 12 questions regarding the ICs. I wonder how the answers to these questions were utilized. Did the researchers only use the questions asking whether whether the participant had a past or current IC, or did they also take into account participants’ answers to the other questions about sensory experiences, etc. when deciding whether what the participant is reporting a real IC or something else. This might especially be an issue when participants are reporting Personified Objects. Because, unless the answers to the other questions are taken into account, it is difficult to know whether the participants are reporting a real IC (PO) or whether they are simply thinking about their comfort and/or transition objects.

On the same questionnaire, participants were asked to rate themselves on creativity. Were the answers to these questions used in any analyses? It might be relevant and interesting, as the researchers discuss that “Collectivist cultures like China have traditionally been more likely to value harmony, conformity and consensus, which may be less creativity oriented” (p.13).

The age is only used as a categorical variable, which I think is okay. But I would like to see a reason for how they decided on these categories (e.g., 18-30 and 31-50). When the distribution in two samples (British vs Chinese) are examined in Table 1, we see that about 80% of Chinese sample was between 18 and 30. I would like the researchers to mention this difference and discuss (if relevant) in relation to the results.

On page 15, it’s stated that “Because ICs can be iICs or POs and both types can have any combination of auditory and visual components for their creators, there are questions around whether there are related differences in face or auditory verbal detection depending on whether one sees or hears their companion. It might be interesting for future research to investigate modality of IC experience and determine whether this relates to top-down processing in only visual tasks, but also auditory.” This question can partially be tested with this dataset, as the researchers are already collecting information about participants’ sensory experiences of their ICs (e.g., Do the participants who report ‘seeing’ their ICs perform differently on the pareidolia task?)

Minor points:

I wonder how the study was advertised and how the recruitment was done – e.g., was the call for participation specify ‘those with ICs’, etc.?

There are typos throughout the paper that need to be fixed – one major typo being in the running head.

On Page 11, it’s stated that “Nature of participants’ ICs allowed us to examine associations between performance on the pareidolia task and individual differences in, for example, the ‘sensory’ experiences of an IC. This analysis was exploratory and these associations are reported in Supplementary Materials.”. However, I could not access this file; the supplementary material file only included the SPSS dataset.

There are also some missing information in the references (e.g., for the paper by Majors and Baines (2017), the Journal Title is incorrect).

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Dear Dr. Davis,

Reviewer 3 has highlighted some outstanding points that need to be addressed before reconsideration for publication.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 12 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

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Clare Eddy

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->?>

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: I appreciate the authors' through care and attention to my comments and recommended revisions. I have no further recommendations at this time.

Reviewer #3: I thank the authors for taking into account many of the comments that were brought up in the earlier version of the manuscript.

However, I still have some remaining concerns regarding both theoretical and methodological aspects of this study.

*As I raised a concern in my previous review, I still think that the expected link between hallucinations and ICs (and pareidolia) needs to be rationalized better in the introduction. In the current version of the manuscript, on page 4 the authors state that “…These links between experiencing ICs and individual differences in theory of mind and creativity, as well as similarities in their phenomenology, have resulted in some researchers (e.g., [20, 23]) suggesting that there are important parallels between IC and hallucinations.” I believe the authors could make their reasoning more explicit.

*Throughout the text, the authors refer to sensory experiences of ICs and how they might be related to hallucinatory experiences. However, as POs are also considered imaginary companions, it would be important to distinguish between invisible ICs and POs, and make separate arguments for their findings when necessary (e.g., visual hallucinations might not be relevant to POs).

*This is also related to my comment in previous version regarding the analysis in terms of sensory experiences. Seeing a PO is not hallucinatory and does not require top-down processing, and given that many adults in the current study report current POs rather than current invisible ICs, I think this should be acknowledged.

*On Page 6, it reads “Romagnano and colleagues have even attempted to rule out own-culture and gender biases when participants look at faces”. Here I find it difficult to relate this Romagnano study to the current research question. I believe further information about the Romagnano (2002) study would be helpful.

*I would like to see a more elaborate discussion of the finding that Chinese participants make significantly more false alarms on the task. In discussion section, on page 16, the authors refer to this result and talk about cultural differences in face processing (“It may follow that, with these cultural differences in face processing, there may also translate to differences in pareidolia perception” lines 388-89). I am having a hard time understanding how this result can be explained away with these. Because 1) we do not see cultural differences in hits, 2) the authors stateon page 17, line 394, the authors write “The greater number of false alarms made by Chinese participants may reflect cross-national differences in response biases (49), rather than reflecting differences in cognitive processes, or may simply be statistical ‘noise’.”

*On page 15, the researchers state that “In our research, British adults remembered significantly more ICs in childhood than Chinese adults. One possible explanation for this difference could be that British culture has been traditionally considered to be individualistic, valuing independence, novelty, autonomy and freedom, all values which may lead to creation of an imagined social relationship”. This could very well be true, however, researchers also report that there is no difference in adult creation of ICs and it seems like that their questionnaire taps at remembering of past Ics rather than necessarily of ‘existence of a childhood IC’. Then, I believe that one should be cautious when interpreting results regarding childhood vs. adult IC. When participants report having a childhood IC, we are actually tapping their memory of one (e.g., they might have forgotten that they had one – especially if it’s not talked much in the family), and it might not mean the same thing as when children report having an IC.

Minor point:

• Gender can be added to the Table 1, to demonstrate basic demographics.

• The SPSS file was available as supplementary material in the previous version, but not in the current version.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Dear Dr. Davis,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

In addition to the points raised by the reviewer #3 elsewhere within this email, please see further required corrections immediately below.

The abstract must be understandable on its own. Please re-write L37-38 as the implication is unclear. It is also unclear what the meaning of “correct face pareidolia” is.

L113 – The word ‘typically’ may be changed to ‘sometimes’

L153 – Images used in all pareidolia tasks do not always resemble faces. Sometimes they are simply noise, in order to elicit false alarms. Please ensure statements such as this are accurate.

L368 – This needs to be rewritten. Is the word ‘because’ missing?

L400 – This paragraph begins with a clause related to the previous sentence. Please structure appropriately.

L397 – Explain what is meant by “received”

L421 – This sentence should be restructured.

After implementing these corrections and those noted by reviewer #3, please read through your entire manuscript carefully, as if you are someone who is unfamiliar with the study and topic, and ensure that all language is precise, and that what you mean is clear to readers.

I will then make a final decision as to suitability for publication.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 31 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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• If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols . Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols .

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Clare Eddy

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Journal Requirements:

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions??>

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->?>

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

Reviewer #3: I thank the authors for taking into account my comments and recommended revisions.

A few minor issues (mainly typos) that I thought the authors might like to address before publication:

1) Typo on Line 169- I think it should read adults' (with apostrophe)

2) Line 187 - may say 'age and gender data for ...'

3) Typo on Line 303 -"in contrast..." ("I" should be capitalized)

4) statistical letters should be italicized in when reporting results (e.g., r, p)

5) there is a large overlap between the info provided in Table 4 and Figure 2. They could be integrated or one can be omitted.

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A Cross-National Study Examining Imaginary Companions and Face Pareidolia in British and Chinese Adults

PONE-D-25-25109R3

Dear Dr. Davis,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Clare Eddy

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

At R3 stage the authors were requested to thoroughly review the manuscript in case of remaining errors/typos. There are still errors within the manuscript e.g. typing error within the running head; use of the word 'less' rather than 'fewer'; poor ordering of clauses in the first sentence of the abstract; the paragraph with an inappropriate break (L399) because after the break it continues to discuss the same point, etc. While the manuscript is now accepted for publication, I am recommending again to the authors that they check and amend their manuscript carefully (now at proofing stage), as I assume there is an appreciation of the benefits of doing so.

Reviewers' comments: